


Heartaches and mistakes, how many hits can a good girl take?

by alltoowell



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/F, Sorry Not Sorry, femmeslash ftw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 08:47:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1598807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoowell/pseuds/alltoowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to 'I let him in, oh man, I let him win' (you could probably read it as a stand-alone so long as you watched the last episode, though) </p><p>They wanted to feel alive; this was the most beautiful kind of proof. </p><p>could also be titled: "ain't no man on that show good enough for Alana, js."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartaches and mistakes, how many hits can a good girl take?

**Author's Note:**

> This just...happened and I liked it so hey, maybe someone else might too! 
> 
> Here's the link to the prequel if you want it, it's more angst than slash but at one point intended this to be the same story: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1598639/chapters/3400970 
> 
> Unbetaed, so apologies if there are any mistakes. Also, I've never really written Freddie before so, yeah, sorry if she's in any way OOC. 
> 
> I would love any feedback. I'm going to leave this as it is for now, but if you're interested in more, I would be up for that too. 
> 
> As always, you want my tumblr or anything like that just let me know!

Jack explained what he could, but then his wife called, and he excused himself, leaving Alana and Freddie alone.

“Interested?” Freddie offered, motioning to half-empty bottle of red wine between them. Alana wondered how long she’d been left here to amuse herself, with just a heavily scrawled-in notepad and ballpoint pen for company.

Alana felt a headache beginning to form between her eyes, probably from all the crying, all the confusion. “I think it would take more than wine to make all of this make sense.”

“I imagined you would have given up trying to make sense of _any_ of this by now,” Freddie mused, pouring a generous helping of wine into a styrofoam coffee cup.

“Tell me I’m not the last to know,” Alana all-but-groaned, as it struck her Freddie fucking Lounds was more in-tune with Jack Crawford and Will Graham’s plans than she was. Dear God, where had she _been_?

Well, Hannibal’s bed, obviously, but that was the most disgusting excuse.

“Of course not,” Freddie said, a note too cheerful. “ _Hannibal_ doesn’t know yet. At least, they don’t think so.” Oblivious to the fact her comment only made Alana sink deeper into her chair, she glanced down at her notepad as she took a long sip of wine. Then, she set the cup back down and picked up her pen. “We should work on your comment,” she said eagerly, a child on Christmas morning.

Utterly unbelievable; ridiculous enough to make Alana laugh out loud.

“Are you serious?” When Freddie did not waver, Alana elaborated. “Everything I know-- or thought I knew-- about the men in my life has just been torn apart and you want me to help you with your _story_?”

The look Freddie shot her was more condescending than concerned. “Too soon?” she asked, mock-sympathetically, and Alana was beginning to re-think being grateful she really was alive.

Not really, but she _was_ beginning to re-think declining alcohol. Wine didn’t hold much appeal, though. Wine was what Hannibal served.

“I’m guessing that’s the best you have to offer?” Alana nodded towards the bottle.

Freddie rolled her eyes. “Yes, I told Agent Crawford he was being beyond miserable. It does taste better than the brand would suggest, though.”

Alana hadn’t even noticed it was cheap, she’d been more concerned with the fact it would at most make her slightly tipsy, rather than the deliriously drunk she’d been hoping for. She reached for her coat.

“You’re going?” Freddie’s sounded small in this oversized conference room. Small and... _desperate_?  

When Alana looked back at her, she promptly looked away. Alana wondered if she’d be allowed to talk to anybody apart from Jack since she got here.

“I need a real drink,” Alana explained, because it was a lot better than saying ‘I need to be alone.’ “Sorry.”

“The hotel I’m staying at has an excellent bar,” Freddie commented, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. When Alana raised an eyebrow, she faltered. “I also am forbidden from actively interacting with anyone who might recognise me. Which includes cab drivers, bartenders and general hotel staff." 

She might have choked if she’d had the energy. “Are you asking me to smuggle you into your hotel room?”

Freddie shrugged and finished off the wine in her cup. “The bar would do just fine.”

It was quite possibly the last thing Alana felt like doing, but she smiled, because it was a hell of a lot better than crying. “Does this mean you’re buying the first round?”

Freddie pursed her lips together in thought. “Well, I can’t use my cards either so--”

Alana laughed, and it felt like release. While she might want to be alone, she did not need to be, and that suddenly made all the difference.

She got up and made her way to the door, knowing Freddie would follow. 

* * *

 

Alana got the drinks. They sat at a dimly lit table where they went blissfully unnoticed and pointedly ignored Jack’s phone calls.

“He’ll think I kidnapped you,” Alana considered, revelling in the rusty taste of the beer she was drinking; at least this was one aspect of her life that hadn’t changed.

“You don’t seem particularly worried.” Freddie’s cell buzzed again, and she carefully placed it in a lone glass of water on a nearby deserted table.

Alana’s jaw dropped. Freddie didn’t even blink. “Hey, it’s FBI issued; they took mine when they had me join Team Will.”

Alana suddenly didn’t feel very mischievous anymore. “Is that what they’re calling it?”

“No. Just me, but it’ll catch on.” Freddie raised an eyebrow. “Don’t brood; it’ll be over before you know it. Could be ending right now, for all we know.”

Alana shut her eyes. “ _Stop_ ,” she said, as close to a plea as she would ever give Freddie the satisfaction of hearing pass her lips. The thought of Will, Hannibal and Jack tearing each other to pieces while she drank herself into oblivion only made her feel more useless than she had before.

“You need to see the bigger picture here.”

“Are you going to offer to write my story?” Alana asked, a bitter laugh forming in her throat. “Are you going to spin it so that I’m a victim?”

Freddie frowned. “You don’t think you have a story to tell? You don’t think you’re a victim already?”

“I don’t want to be their victim,” Alana murmured, and it was the truth. The only thing worse than being somebody’s toy was being their _broken_ toy. Neither Hannibal or Will deserved to have the capability to turn her into that.

“How about a survivor? And who better to tell your story than me, a _fellow_ survivor. We’re the lucky ones, you know.” Freddie titled her head, staring deeper into her glass.

“Do you feel lucky, Freddie?” Alana very pointedly looked around, at all of the people from whom they had to hide because Freddie was supposed to be buried six foot underground; because the only way any of them could be safe is if they lied down and played dead. “ _I_ don’t feel very lucky.”

“I told you, Alana. It won’t be like this for long.”

“They can take as long as they want, do whatever they want, because they know we can’t do anything about it. If we do, we’ll be the ones to die.” Alana’s anger came in the form coherent resentment, and she was grateful. “Those three, they’re untouchable. They only people who can hurt any of them is each other.” She took another drink and shook her head. “If you think either of us have any sort of control, then you’re even stupider than I’ve been.”

After a long moment, they were silent. But then Freddie leaned across her, retrieving the bottle of wine-- this one, a brand she agreed with. Alana caught sight of dark bruises around her wrist. They were old, already beginning to fade, but they had her eyes narrowing all the same.

“Will?” she prompted, softer than before, but her words were still heavy with disappointment. She nodded toward Freddie’s wrist, elaborating when she realised the other woman was completely confused. “He hurt you?”

A small shrug. “It’s better than being dead. However, I do intend to sue,” Freddie assured her, and a small smile tugged at the corner of Alana’s lips as she watched her take a long sip from her wine. A moment of silence passed, and then Freddie was turning to her, something soft in her eyes that Alana supposed might pass for something resembling sympathy. “How about you?”

“What?”

“Did he hurt you? I’m guessing it was him-- not many survive Hannibal’s attacks.” Alana blinked at her; Freddie sighed. “You didn’t just wake up this morning and decide I was right. Something must have happened to make you harass the truth out of Jack.”

“It’s been a... _strange_ week.” That was putting it mildly, but Alana was not in the mood for re-hashing of events she was already beginning to question. “I guess it all just finally clicked, like a crossword I had to step away from and re-visit with fresh eyes to finish.”

“Or a jigsaw,” Freddie added, her eyes fixing on Alana’s from across the table. “Do all the pieces fit?”

Alana took another swig of beer. “I have all the pieces, I think. I just haven’t put all of them together yet: I’m afraid to see the completed work.”

“You’re not _that_ afraid; if I were you, I’d be on the first plane out of here.” A hint of... _admiration_ in Freddie’s voice? Alana felt her cheeks darken, and that in itself was unique. When was the last time she’d blushed?

“It hadn’t even crossed my mind,” Alana said honestly. “This is my mess as much as anybody’s. I feel obliged to wait around for the inevitable crash and whatever might constitute a clean-up.” She turned her hands over, considered the lines on her palms were roadmaps to a destination where none of this mattered. “It’s the least I can do.”

Freddie did not look convinced. “I don’t even think you believe that yourself.”

Alana shut her eyes, felt the truth bleed out of her bitterly. “I hate that I’m too entangled to leave. I hate feeling trapped. I hate that they’ve all caught me, in different ways.”

"Do you hate them?” A simple enough question, and while it was fairly obvious Freddie was referring to all three men, Alana did not feel the need to distinguish her feelings separately. It all boiled down to how they’d manipulated her, one way or another.

“I want to,” she said. “I want to be able to sell you my story and take the money and leave all of this behind, start a new life somewhere I won’t need to carry a gun; I want to believe that Hannibal is the killer everyone says he is, to forget everything that he’s been to me that contradicts that; I want to walk away from Will and never look back, for both our sakes.”

Freddie was staring at her the way nobody had for a long time; like she was taking her in, re-considering her. It should have been odd, but it felt... _nice_. It felt like a second chance. “It’s a little too raw to assume you can’t do any of those things. In time, you might be capable of hatred; you might have the self-preservation to cut your losses; you might even be brave enough to leave them behind.”

“You’re willing to wait _that_ long for my story?” It was a joke, Alana’s feeble attempt at lightening the mood, but a wall went up in Freddie’s eyes.

“I don’t care about your story,” she said, and then thought better of her statement. Her eyes widened. “Well, unless of course you want to--"

“-- is it _that_ dull? Or just incredibly unrealistic? I get it, who would honestly fall for the bullshit I have, right?”

Freddie smirked. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant-- I want you to be okay. When all of this is over, even though the odds are stacked against you right now, I want you to come out unscathed.”

“But not because you want to write about me?” This wasn’t making sense to Alana. She was only two beers in; her brain shouldn’t be this fuzzy.

“No. Just because-- I don’t know. There’s been enough damage. And you…you really didn’t deserve this anymore than any of the rest of them did.” Freddie looked up, teasing in her eyes, “although you do make a much more interesting article subject alive than dead. Corpses don’t get drunk and spill secrets.”

Alana didn’t have many secrets, but she did have one right now: she really wasn’t ready to leave just yet. 

* * *

An hour or two passed: the bar began to fill up; drunken hotel guests home for the night, and Freddie was visibly getting uncomfortable.

Alana didn’t know what she was thinking when she leaned closer and asked, “Is your room as nice as this bar?” but she did know that it had Freddie laughing.

“Shouldn’t you be getting home?” Freddie asked, moments later, as she held the door to the hotel stairwell open.

“It doesn’t hold much appeal, strangely. It smells like him. Hannibal came over the other night and, um--”

Freddie held her hand up. “This is my night off from journalism. I don’t need full disclosure.”

“Does this mean anything said tonight stays between us?” It seemed too much to ask for; too good to be true. If Alana had gained anything over the last week, it was the knowledge that she couldn’t trust anybody anymore: not even herself.

“Alana, I doubt I’ll even remember your involvement in the plan tomorrow.” As if to illustrate how far gone she was, Freddie tripped over a stair. They burst into laughter in unison; feeling more like carefree schoolgirls than women with chips on their shoulders. 

* * *

They’d gone to three wrong doors before they found the right one. It was a bigger room than Alana expected (she’d been under the impression the Bureau was on a budget) but Freddie was only interested in the bed. She collapsed on top of it.

“You must be tired,” Alana said, suddenly somewhere near bashful. She’d sobered up in the bright lighting of the hotel room. She didn’t know why she was here, only that there was nowhere else she wanted to be. “I ought to go.”

“Stay,” Freddie said, patting the space beside her and sinking her head deeper into the pillow. “Is it even safe for you to be alone right now?”

Alana didn’t know. She’d left without resolving things with Jack.

“I have a gun,” she said, indignant, but she still climbed onto the bed, kicking her heels off.

Freddie snorted. “Does Hannibal know that?”

“I don’t know,” Alana said, biting her lip, because she didn’t. For all she knew, it was just another trick. “Will gave it to me.”

“Seems like giving you a gun only involves you more.”

She’d considered that herself, actually. “Maybe it’s time I got involved; they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it themselves.”

“It’s a little late to think this is fixable, Alana. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but maybe the best thing you can really do right now is protect yourself.” Freddie lifted her head up, so that they were meeting each other’s eyes. “If you have to, you need to be ready to kill any one of them.”

“I think that’s the wine talking.”

“No, it’s the harsh truth. We can trust Crawford, maybe. Will, on a good day, sure; on a bad day, don’t even consider it. Hannibal-- never, not anymore. If things go bad, you need to have the strength to finish it.”

It did not bother Alana in the slightest that Freddie was talking about her shooting the men she loved. She was focused solely on the fact Freddie had said ‘we’ instead of ‘you’; that from the moment she’d walked into that conference room and seen Freddie’s smug and satisfied face, Alana hadn’t felt alone.

This was what she was thinking, when she leaned over and kissed Freddie lightly on the lips.

Freddie tasted like lipstick and wine, sweet and sticky and impossibly soft. Alana leaned closer, before realising Freddie’s lips were quite obviously not reciprocating. She pulled back, embarrassed, ducking her head.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, pushing herself off the bed. She staggered to her feet, and then Freddie’s hand was on her wrist, steadying her.

“No you’re not,” Freddie said, and she was smirking, and oh God Alana knew this was a terrible idea, but she brushed her hair back, behind her ear, lifting her chin a fraction, eyes meeting Freddie’s challenge.

“No,” Alana admitted, hoping she sounded slightly more confident than she felt. “I’m really not.”

Because Freddie might be the personification of a snake, but she had never lied to Alana, which already set her apart from every other person in this scenario. Because Freddie was not another man who could play, use or disappoint her. Because she’d never looked in Freddie’s eyes and asked herself if the she was a serial killer. Because unlike Will and Hannibal, Freddie did not have enough of Alana to break her heart.

Freddie got to her knees on the bed, so she was level with her. Her lips instigated the next kiss, and it suddenly wasn’t a good call for Alana to be standing, so she allowed Freddie to pull her back with her.

She was delicate, where Hannibal and Will’s lips had been rough. She was sweet, when they’d left the most bitter taste in her mouth. There was another reason why it was different than kissing a man: to Alana, it felt beautifully equal. 

Breathless within seconds of kissing, and Alana’s heart was thundering in her chest blissfully enough to remind her that it was still there, that she wasn’t all gone, yet, and it was all the confirmation she needed to unbutton her blouse.

Freddie found this hilarious, and if Alana had been closer to being sober, she might have been affronted.

“I can honestly say I never imagined you’d be so--”

Alana didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence, so she kissed Freddie again. Whatever had Freddie so surprised was quickly forgotten, lost in the heated passion of soft hands on softer curves and skirts and tights being slipped off smooth legs and the precious shade staining both their lips, where two different colours of chapstick had combined.

When Freddie’s hands brushed with the lace of her bra, Alana decided she’d had quite enough of the tortuously slow pace.

She drew back from kissing, loving the way Freddie’s mouth followed her-- magnets latched to each other, two pieces that fit together too easily-- and she rested her head against Freddie’s, her hair falling like a curtain, tickling Freddie’s cheeks devilishly as Alana ran her fingers through auburn curls.  

She wanted to say something incredibly seductive, wanted to say something that would ignite Freddie to want her more, something that would pull them both closer. Instead, she shyly whispered, “I’m actually really glad you’re not dead.”

Alana loved being close enough to feel the vibration of Freddie’s laughter, loved the way the tingling of it echoing in her ears had her smiling too.

“I’ve been playing dead for so long,” Freddie practically purred, and Alana might be awful with seduction but Freddie was skilled enough for the both of them, “right now, I think I just want to feel alive again.”

Alana placed a kiss on her slender neck, heart bursting with the relief that this was an even playing field; that no one was being manipulated or fooled with false pretences.

She wanted to feel alive too. It wasn’t a nice feeling, thinking that your days were likely numbered, but it could be trumped with the reminder that for now, she was still here, still real.

For now, Freddie with her teasing eyes, her tender hands, her playful tongue, was exactly the kind of reminder Alana needed: the men, they hadn’t won, not yet. 

* * *

“I just slept with Hannibal Lecter’s girlfriend,” Freddie mused, when they were stated and sticky and a tangle of arms and legs and curls. “If I wasn’t already dead--”

 Alana suffocated this thought with a kiss. She didn’t think to think of herself as Hannibal’s anything, not anymore; neither he nor Will had earned that kind of ownership over her. When she drew back, she whispered against Freddie's lips, “Write about me.”

Freddie smiled-- closer to a smirk, but framed by exhaustion. “Write about _this_?”

“Write anything you want,” Alana said, honestly, licking her lips. “It won’t matter; I won’t be around to make my own excuses.”

Freddie’s eyes darkened, they gained a hold of Alana’s blue and refused to let go. “Don’t say things like that,” she said, tone sharp enough to wound, but then she quickly replaced with with a roll of those lioness eyes. “You can’t sue me for libel from beyond the grave, and I know how much you’d hate for me to get the last word.”  

Alana liked that Freddie softened everything with a joke. She liked that it didn’t disguise the underlying concern. Most of all, she liked that she could read Freddie.

There would be time for regret in the morning; for now, the fact she was capable of feeling these things-- feeling anything at all, really-- was nothing short of remarkable.


End file.
